Kyle talks about his background and his growing family (1:45)
Kyle goes into more detail about his educational administration career path (4:40)
He had planned to go into administration even before he became a teacher (7:15)
How he knew when it was the right time to make the move from teaching into admin (7:50)
Making the move from teaching to administration while juggling work, a master’s program, and raising a family (8:45)
The benefits of a cohort master’s degree program, and why Kyle’s glad he got his degree when his children were very young (9:45)
The mindset you’ll need in order to succeed in a master’s degree program (10:50)
Important advice from a teacher that still guides Kyle in his administration career (12:45)
One of the most memorable moments of Kyle’s career in administration (15:20)
The powerful impact school administrators can have on their community (18:00)
Kyle tells aspiring school administrators what they can do to stand out during the application process (19:55)
Two educators who had a powerful influence on Kyle (23:00)
The biggest difference between the impact Kyle had as a teacher compared to the influence he has as an administrator (23:52)
The best leadership advice Kyle ever received –people before programs (26:07)
The importance of empowering and trusting teachers and other staff members (26:30)
Kyle’s top book recommendations for school leaders (26:55)
Why Kyle recommends TweetDeck for Twitter (29:40)
Kyle’s favorite educational quote (30:40)
Advice for administrators for working with the students in your school (31:40)
Advice for administrators for working with the teachers in your school (32:45)
What advice Kyle wishes he had had when he was just starting his journey into school administration (35:00)
Books mentioned in this episode
Digital Leadership: Changing Paradigms for Changing Times by Eric Sheninger
Cultures Built to Last: Systemic PLCs at Work by Richard Dufour and Michael Fullan
The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership by John C. Maxwell
The Principal: Three Keys to Maximizing Impact by Michael Fullan
Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…And Others Don’t by Jim Collins
Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies by Jim Collins
Great by Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck–Why Some Thrive Despite Them All by Jim Collins
Apps and tools mentioned in this episode
Connect with Kyle Palmer
Lewis and Clark Elementary School Website
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Podcast Session #13
Investing Time in Your Teachers and Students Pays Huge Dividends
Show notes: http://www.educatorslead.com/kylepalmer/
This is the Educators Lead podcast with Jay Willis, Session #13. Let’s go!
Intro: Dr. Kyle Palmer is a principal of Lewis and Clark Elementary in Liberty, MO which is nationally recognized and has earned the designation of a 2015 Model School by the International Center for Leadership in Education and a Solution Tree nationally distinguished Model PLC School in 2013-2014 and 2015. Kyle earned his Undergraduate degree from University of Northern Iowa, his Master’s degree at Drake University and his Doctorate from Baker University in Kansas. Kyle is a Solution Tree and ICLE associate and a father of four. That’s just a brief introduction Kyle, but tell us a little bit more about yourself.
Dr. Palmer: Well, thank you for the great introduction. Like you said, I had a lot of great opportunities for you know going to different schools and things and I got my doctorate in 2013 and did my dissertation on Closing the Knowing-Doing Gap in PLC Implementations. So that’s been something that was then a great passion of mine for a long time. Like you said, we have 4 kids. Karson, Klaire, Kal, and Kauffman and Kauffman just came here back in Thanksgiving so were having a new born in the household again has, have been had a challenges but every day is great. We love our family of six and my wife Tarah also is an assistant principal. She works in the neighboring district here in North Kansas City. So needless to say, we talked about education quite, quite a bit in our household. So thanks for asking me to do this today and I’m looking forward to it.
Jay: Absolutely! It’s my pleasure. So, wow congratulations on the new arrival. Pretty exciting, so your house is probably pretty crazy right now.
Dr. Palmer: Very much. We’re enjoying our break during holiday times, so it’s been nice to get down times and enjoy family, kind of get caught up on somethings and get some reading then.
Jay: Yeah, so what’s something maybe that you could share with our audience that most people know about you; just something about your personal life.
Dr. Palmer: Well, most people would know that I’m a sports fanatic and I read at times. But they probably don’t know that I just recently signed up to do some of John Maxwell’s training so I’m going to become a John Maxwell certified trainer and coach and I do a bunch of online things and tutorials and workshops and videos and I go in March to Orlando, go to become an officially certified coach and teacher but that’s just something I recently have done. That’s something I’ve been in love for a long long time and you know in leadership is kind of who I am to my core so which will give me the opportunity to you know, it’s just impact, others add value to others in more ways.
Jay: Nice. Yeah, that’s great. I know Steven Covey talked about in his. I think it’s in the Seven Habits’ of Effective People where he talks about sharpening the saw and yeah boy, that John Maxwell training. I’ve heard a lot of great things about. I have a lot of friends who are I guess its certified coaches, is that what you called that afterwards, ok yeah and that’s just sounds like a great opportunity to really take your leadership up on that to the next level because I mean John Maxwell just has some incredible leadership tools. I mean just advice, wisdom so yeah that’s great. So tell us a little bit more, I know you kind of mentioned a little bit. Tell us a little bit more about your career path.
Dr. Palmer: I you know, I first knew I wanted to become a teacher coach back in high school, and it was my senior year or junior in high school and you know I was not playing a sport. I saw a bunch of kids, you know junior high classes going on and I, you know I was a senior actually at that time. I volunteered to help the coach. I helped them in early morning practices, morning time practices and just volunteered to do with all of the junior high team. And I just fell in love with coaching and you know teaching kids and I knew at that moment I wanted to go to UNI because that’s the closest school to which I live. And absolutely phenomenal, you know education school. Just knew that’s what I wanted to do. So it was a pretty easy decision. I found that actually after I when I was going through college that my grandfather. He was one of 9 and I think he was the 8th child and the first one is actually you know be able to go to college. Wanted to be a teacher and a coach too, so that was a pretty cool plan. Just something that was an actual fit; you know it’s kind of my strength on and being able to influence others and lead people that’s just kind of in my calling in myself. It was a pretty easy decision for me. And I went to UNI and then I start teaching 4th grade in Ankeny, Ankeny was a very high performing district just north of Des Moines. I was very fortunate to get that job and after that 3 or 4 years, I got married you know, I had Karson and I knew that I want to be a principal that was you know just kind of I knew. And I got my master’s degree and just a by the grace of God I got hired down here in Liberty. I had a, you know, straight out of the classroom essentially so I was new to the State of Missouri. I was new to the principalship. You know I became a principal of Lewis and Clark which was already a very high achieving, very respected school not only in Liberty but also the state. It was a tremendously steep learning curve but just I think I learned a lot about my craft in leadership by working with people and I had a couple of great mentors and Tim Nelson and Katie Olson. Steve Fleming hired me and took a chance on a 30 year old teacher from Iowa and its hope I worked after pretty well.
Jay: So, was there a specific point in time that you can kind of point to where you made the decision to move into school leadership?
Dr. Palmer: No, I can remember while I interviewed for my teaching job with Jim Ford who was the principal in Ankeny who hired me. One of the last interview question he asked me, this is you know before getting my very first job. He asked me what I wanted to do in five years. I said, “What you’re doing” so I knew even before I started teaching that I wanted to become a principal. The biggest question for me probably was; when was the right time to become a principal because there’s you know there’s, it’s just a whole different world. You know after I got my master’s all done, I just I knew it was the right time because I just thought so differently. I didn’t think as the classroom teacher anymore, I thought as one who was you know influencing and thinking about the entire building and all the moving parts to go on with that. The biggest question for me was when I was ready and I just you know; it’s just kind of a feeling you get when you know that you’re ready because you’re done in teaching. You’re ready for that next step. Kind of waking together and it happened here in 2007.
Jay: Yeah, so tell us about that journey to becoming a school administrator like obviously you had to take more classes. I mean how did you, obviously because you were married and you had 1 as you are pursuing your masters and you say you had Karson?
Dr. Palmer: Yeah, we had Karson and I started in when during my time there we had Klaire so ….
Jay: So how did you juggle through that?
Dr. Palmer: I also coached a lot. You know first of all I left it to my wife Tarah, she’s been extremely supportive. She took on a lot of things when I was gone. Now she has gone through and I’ve done the same thing. So it was truly a give and take, you know where I and she sacrificed for me and I sacrificed for her. She’s getting her doctorate now as well. It just takes a strong family. You need to sacrifice, it takes trying to do things late at night or when the kids were sleeping. I, my favorite time of the day to work even until now is you know get up early on a Saturday and Sunday morning about 5:30 and work for a couple or 3 hours before everyone else is up. But Drake was a great program that I loved most of that Drake was that it was cohorted program so we started with 25 people and we went through every single class with the same 25 people. It was hard because it was Saturdays and Sundays. Which is obviously, a lot of great family time there. It was nice that I didn’t have to run some place you know once a night every week that kind of makes your week very very long. The thing I always wanted to do was do the classes and do my programs when the kids are younger because they don’t miss and remember as much if I’m gone on a Saturday or I missed you know, kindergarten or that basketball game or whatever it may be. I never missed much that they’re not gonna remember that as much as they’ll remember their first start as the varsity basketball player as a sophomore or you know whatever it may be so I was just glad and I always made it a point to get my stuff as done as early in my life as I could so as the kids got older I didn’t miss as much of that stuff.
Jay: Yeah, so I’m sure along the journey from teacher to school administrator, I’m sure there’s some ups and some downs along the way. What was one of your most difficult moments in the journey to becoming an administrator?
Dr. Palmer: You mean as the principal or as the teacher on becoming …
Jay: Yeah, just on the pathway to becoming a principal, like you talked a lot the you know, the late nights and the weekends and things like that, was there, if you could just kind of, I guess share a specific story of one of the most difficult times, that’s kind of what, I’m looking for or if you have a specific story like that.
Dr. Palmer: You know not really, I really enjoyed all the stuff that I did. You know the kids were still very young. I didn’t feel like I missed a lot of what, of what they were doing or it was just, it’s just a grind. It’s just you know I think if you have that mentality going into it, you’re gonna be ok with it. It’s nothing is super hard, nothing is unachievable, nothing is impossible. You just have to have the mindset that that is the grind. And for me, the writing was always the hardest part. To write a 10 page reflective paper or 15 pages reflective paper. To be quite honest, the hardest part that I’ve done; I felt is that some of the classes that you take in no matter what level is they do all the things that we tell our teachers not to do or we don’t want for kids that makes the classes you know just very conversant and very boring. And that’s the hardest part; if you’ve something that you don’t value or things that’s just a waste of your time that you know that you’re missing quality time with your family. That’s part is the hardest part of what I went through.
Jay: Yeah, well so I guess just thinking about the journey. Was there anything that you feel like you took away from that whole process, you know as your moving from teacher to principal that was the greatest just because I feel like through some of the, the adversity that I’ve experienced. Some of the greatest lessons that I’ve learned that I kind of took with me, you know all throughout the rest of my life. Are there any experiences like that or any I guess take aways from the journey from teacher to principal that you could share with us?
Dr. Palmer: The best advice that I ever got was when I became a principal as I was finishing my 7th year of teaching. There was a teacher who was a reading buddy classroom. That was the 1st grade classroom and we were doing activity on that afternoon. It was kind of getting late in spring and her name was Kathy Dalt and she is a little fire cracker, she’s a phenomenal teacher and you know when she spokes you listen, and she’s just looked at me one day and she said, “Don’t you ever forget what it was like to be a teacher” and I think that it lived with me every single day, it lived with me through most all the decisions that I make and it’s probably been one of the biggest influencing event of my mindset and style or leadership as a principal that you can’t forget what it was like to do that particular job. You know, moving to central office and still thinking about what it is like to be a principal when you know people respect you and they value you because they know that you appreciate what they’re going through from what they do each day. That’s for us far as being a principal on my journey as I finished in teaching going into the principalship, that was, that’s the part of the story I can totally remember that till forever to live to the day I die.
Jay: Yeah.
Dr. Palmer: And the influence that she had on me and just to always appreciate what it’s like in the life of teachers because they’re working hard there, they want to be masters of their craft. You know teachers; everyone wants to do a good a job and sometimes we have to think of how difficult their lives are. When they’re trying to take care of you know 25 kids in their classroom that has vastly different you know needs every second of the day.
Jay: Yeah. Yeah that’s solid advice. So another question I was gonna ask you. I’m sure that kind of along those lines just even in you know in education and then as an administrator, I’m sure you’ve had a lot of just really neat moving stories of ways that maybe you’ve impacted the school or specific people whether it’s a teacher or the students in some way, but if you could just share a story of maybe one of the biggest, one of the best moments where you were able to acknowledge your see-the-impact that you’re making.
Dr. Palmer: It probably was the most special moments I’ve had in my 9 years at Lewis and Clark was, I think in 2012, about the time when I finished you know my doctorate, I was also named Area Principal of the Year, so through our, through our Clay-Platte region of MAESP of the Missouri Association of Elementary Principal of the principals, they now made me as one of the 12 you know award winning principals of the state. And then you kind of went thru a process for you know to be the actual winner and I did get that but anyway, through that process, they organized kind of like a surprise, a special ceremony for me and you know they brought in our kids and they brought, my parents came down from Iowa. Our assistant principal, Tim Nelson kind of had a lot to do with that. People from the central office came over, that was one of the biggest things I’ve ever been through…to just kind of sit there and you know have all the 600 kids and have all 50 teachers and staff members and my parents and my family and our superintendents and people who hired me and those who mentored me kind of all there at the same time. You really, you know, you never know how what you are able to do for others or to impact others. Like that was pretty, that moment was very special to me but in order to just being in Liberty to you know the nearest things for me or to a I’ve been there for 9 years and you know we’ve had kids who are seniors now or who are in college now and you know just go around and you know se them at different events or working at the local grocery store or you know, I can go just anywhere in Liberty and somebody says, “Oh what are you doing?” I said, “I’m the principal at Lewis and Clark” “Oh, oh you’re the principal of Lewis and Clark, Wow!” I just heard so many wonderful things. We had another story here but a ….
Jay: Yeah, go ahead.
Dr. Palmer: We had another staff member who received an award a couple of weeks ago and came in and did kind of a special presentation to our school, this is at fall break and there was like a business sponsor along with our superintendent and our director of communications and I had no clue of who that, the business person was a banker, worked at a bank here in town, he kind of sponsored this little program that they have, celebrating staff members and so he comes in and I have no idea who he is and we do the, we do kind of presentation of the award of the staff member. We do our you know the celebration and take in all pictures and he, he leaned over to me. He said, “Are you Kyle Palmer” I said, “Yeah, I’m Kyle Palmer, the principal” he’s like, “I had to meet you, I have 3 parents of yours who work at our bank and all they do is rave about how awesome your school”. You know it’s never about me, it’s never about whatever, it’s always the school you know, it’s always the reputation of Lewis and Clark has in the area and really in the state and we’re very proud to say you know somewhat at the national level and that’s with our model school awards and Solution Tree distinguished thing then you know for that person to go of its way and go introduce himself and just to say, “You know I’ve heard so many great things about this place” and that’s to me is the most special part.
Jay: Yeah, that’s great. The word is out about how awesome your school is. So you’re like a little celebrity.
Dr. Palmer: Yeah the people, you know, that’s probably my number 1 thing is just “Treat people right and they will treat you right” Help them do the best they can do, and its people before program, and to be a true leader, yeah, to be able to work with people and motivate people. I take the most pride and just the reputation our school has, it’s an awesome place.
Jay: Yeah, so I’m gonna ask you a question that actually came in from one of our listeners who had sent me an email and this is just somebody who is aspiring to become a principal, and the question is; what can aspiring school administrator or as people who yeah aspiring school administrator, what can I do to help themselves stand out during the application process?
Dr. Palmer: That’s a great question. Because you know, with all the changes in the 21st century, you know even that process is changing so much now, and I have to go back to that people thing. It’s how you present yourself as a person. It’s you know, I think you could, you could spend a lot of time to get a nice fancy resume. You could write a lot of great letters of interest for a particular role. You may even know somebody who knows somebody. But to me, for someone to stand out is just how they present themselves. It’s how they engage with you. it’s how they are able to talk with you and that’s so much you know what they say but you know, it’s how did they respond with what they say and it’s how they are able to give specific examples, you know I hope that I have good enough questions where I’m a, I’m not looking so much for the experiences of somebody and that’s true for teachers too. I’m looking for how great of a person are they? You know, because I think that goes back to our school too that when you hire great people, everything just kind of takes care of itself. I’m a big advocate of you know, you can teach somebody how to set better or how to teach better or how to supervise teachers. You can, you know teach somebody and evaluation system. But you can never; you can’t teach someone so much how to be a great person or how to be caring, compassionate, innovative, creative, a team player and just leader. You know, I just I look for leadership. I look for somebody who is a leader, because leaders make things happen. I don’t want you know, I don’t want a bunch of followers, I want a bunch of leaders.
Jay: Yeah.
Dr. Palmer: Surrounding me, so hopefully that answers that question.
Jay: Yeah, that’s great and obviously leadership is something that not only you’re passionate about but you’re constantly trying to develop a better or you know further development as a leader as a better leader because I mean for you to be going into the John Maxwell leadership training, you know it just shows that even though you’ve been in the position you’re at for as long as you have and you have a leadership positions for a long time, you know you haven’t arrived in your constantly still trying to grow and learn and becoming a better leader.
Dr. Palmer: Right, yeah it’s a, you know it’s something it’s been a part of me for a long time. I’m always the one who was, you know, like a captain on the sports team, or who would stand up and say something or whatever it may be. I had a teacher probably one of the biggest, two of my biggest influences of my life besides obviously my mom and dad and you know grandpa and things, are two teachers I had, one, her name is Jennifer Lendivit who was my high school math teacher and she saw that in me right away and really really worked to pull that out of me, and a baseball coach I had, his name is Jay Alester. You know I understood it later as I got older, I understood what they were doing for me that back when I was in high school. I’m just getting out to high school and beginning to coach and do different things. So they saw something in me and they wanted to add value to me so I think I’ve always tried to use that and to do that for other people as well. So it’s as if, you know I think everything rises and fall on leadership just like John Maxwell said.
Jay: Yeah. That’s great. So what would you say is the biggest difference between the impact you had as a teacher and the impact you now have as a principal?
Dr. Palmer: I think that just the, I think the magnitude of your influence. You know that could be a bad thing or that could be hopefully a very good thing. You know when you are with your 25 kids, you influence the lives in the kids of you know 25 families. So kids you know, whatever maybe, whatever a problem arises or whatever celebration you know comes along, you take that from 25 kids to 600 kids and our school has always been around in the 600 kids and you know just the, I don’t know if you, I don’t want to call it a pressure because I don’t think you can look at that as pressure. Hopefully you looked at that you know, calling or that job is, you know, something that motivates you to do this the best as you can but just the magnitude of your influence and just you know the diversions that you run into when you go to from 25 to 600, the different community aspects, to different parenting groups, the different behavior of kids and adult too you know, when you have 25 kids, you’ve got 25 chairs. When you become principal not only do you have 600 kids, you have 50 adults and you know no matter how great people are and how much I value people and want to be able to add value to people and influence people on the positive way and built teacher leadership and you know, hopefully bring people along with me as they g…sometimes people are messy, and that, and that makes it hard some days but that’s a, they’re also the biggest you know; the biggest influence of our school is to have great teachers. So I’ve always known and believed that the better job I can do of having great teachers, they and all staff will do a better job, will take better care of our kids so it all works out pretty well.
Jay: Yeah, yeah so I’m gonna roll through real quick some rapid fire questions if you’re ready for those?
Dr. Palmer: Ok. Sure.
Jay: So the first question is what’s the best leadership advoce you’ve ever received?
Dr. Palmer: People before programs. Worry more about developing and leading people and not so much about the silver bullets and the gimmicks and the program and that you think will cure all ills.
Jay: That’s good. What would you say is your biggest strength as a principal?
Dr. Palmer: Empowering others, leading others, trying to build capacity in others to lead and being understanding and trusting teachers to do their best and not trying to micro-manage them.
Jay: Do you have a book or two that you’d recommend for other school leaders?
Dr. Palmer: Oh man, I could go on all day about books. I just read The Innovator’s Mindset by George Couros and it’s awesome. Any book by Eric Sheninger, you know the Digital Leadership book that he wrote a couple of years ago. Any book by Rick Dufour and the PLC staff, like Whatever It Takes, whatever PLC books you can get your hands on by Solution Tree. You know I started reading John Maxwell back when I was in high school. The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership is like a bible to me. I’ve read it three times. I started reading it again last week. The 21 laws is a must read for anyone who wants to do anything with leadership and with other people.
Jay: Yeah.
Dr. Palmer: Those are kind of my main ones. I also would like to say anything but there’s a great new book, it’s called The Principal by Michael Fullan. It came out two or three years ago. He does a great job of really taking some complex ideas and making them pretty simple to understand. And then I just loved the Jim Collins stuff, you know Good to Great and Built to Last. And his new book, Great by Choice.
Jay: Yes.
Dr. Palmer: It’s a lot of business stuff but you can apply it all to education.
Jay: Right.
Dr. Palmer: He has a very deep thinking, research based, awesome, awesome author so I do a lot of reading of Jim Collins as well.
Jay: You mentioned something that reminded me of Jim Collins earlier when you had just talked about hiring because he talks about getting the right people on the bus and then the right people in the right seats that are on the bus.
Dr. Palmer: Yup.
Jay: So yeah whenever you mentioned just getting the right people in the school is such a big part of it. You just reminded me of that from Jim Collins.
Dr. Palmer: For beginning principals or anyone, it’s such a huge role and when you’re at a place long enough, you will get a chance to hire a lot of new staff in different capacities and that has a huge impact on your school over time and just always, you’ve got to be right almost all the time with that and if you make any wrong calls on that, it’s kind of a gift that keeps on giving. That’s gonna make your job a lot harder.
Jay: So is there a technology tool sort of like you know like Boxer or Twitter would be, that you would recommend to other school leaders?
Dr. Palmer: Yeah, I like my Tweet Deck. That’s just, Tweet Deck is you know Twitter obviously but you can have all the different conversations going on at one time. So it’s easy if you want to get on a twitter chat or like I follow the John Maxwell team, I followed. You know @edchat or @digitalead or @leadered. I also kind of facilitate the Solution Tree twitter chat @PLC. So that organizes all the tweets for me, information coming in. I mean, it is just nonstop 24/7 access to professional development really so to have a way to organize that, helps you kind of take it in a little better. Tweet Deck because it’s the simplest thing to do.
Jay: Ok. What would be your favorite educational quote?
Dr. Palmer: I love the one by Todd Whitaker you know, just a thought of being a principal, this quote: When the principal sneezes, the whole school catches a cold. I think that’s kind of going back to what I said earlier just we got, you can’t be too high, you can’t be too low, you can’t be dramatic, you know when you are that way, everyone feeds off of you; good or bad. You know I’ve always tried to not overreact or you know make problems worse than what they are. You know sometimes people think I maybe make decisions too slow but that’s saved me a lot more than it has cost me. I just love his thought on; if you sneeze, if you do something that just, is a bad, bad decision, that spreads like a wildfire across your building and you will have some pretty negative consequences.
Jay: Yeah, what advice would you have for working with the students in your school?
Dr. Palmer: You know I think, the more I’ve done it, the more you realize there’s, there’s talents in every kid. There’s a gift in every kid, let’s just try to figure it out what their gift or talent is. I think we try to put kids in boxes; we try to make them think our way or act our way or do it our way and sometimes we forget that if we could have kind of buy in and give the kids some more opportunities to show us who they are, it will actually make our lives a lot easier and much more successful with the kids.
Jay: That’s good.
Dr. Palmer: And they can be frustrating and it’s hard to do but I think if we always keep our perspective of you know, or what if this was our kid would, would I want a principal or a teacher right now treating one of my four kids this way? That’s also a good reminder too.
Jay: Yeah, that’s powerful. What advice would you have for an administrator working with the teachers in the building?
Dr. Palmer: To value what they do. To respect what they do. And try to be more of a positive influence than a negative influence. If you can give teachers a chance to show you who they are and how they tick, how they operate, what they respond to, not try to make all of them conform to how we want something to be done. It will be much more positive to just invest in them, that’s never a waste of time, that’s never a waste of money, that’s never a waste of any resource because they are the greatest resource so everything you can do to invest in somebody else specifically a teacher is going to pay huge dividends down the road.
Jay: That’s good, what’s the best way for somebody to connect with you after the show if they want to reach out?
Dr. Palmer: Yeah on Twitter. My Twitter handle is @kpalmerLC. You can go on to our Lewis and Clark website and get you know contact stuff out of that. I do LinkedIn but I’m not sure what my username is for that; I don’t use it very much.
Jay: Right.
Dr. Palmer: I’m on Facebook too. You can contact me with your Facebook. Kyle Palmer, just search for me and Liberty should come up. I do a lot of Facebook. A lot of direct messaging and you know friends stuff and just trying to contact people all across the world, etc. Those are the two biggest platforms that I use that . Call our school, Twitter, whatever. We also have a link on there too, so if anyone wants to come and visit our school and we’re starting to do a lot of that now, and if you want to come and visit our school or talk sometime, there’s a link and put your information and we’ll get back with you.
Jay: Ok. So last question; if you could go back to when you’re a teacher and you had just made the decision to move into school leadership or just starting the journey, if you could jump in the time machine and then go back to that point, what advice would you give to your younger self?
Dr. Palmer: That’s a great question. To just be you and you’re never gonna make everyone happy. But I think be resolute in what you believe is right and everything works out in the end.
Jay: That’s good. Very good. Well, edu-leaders this has been a great interview today. For the show notes of today’s show and other resources visit educatorslead.com and type the word kyle into the search tool to find his show notes. Kyle, thank you very much for sharing your journey with us today!
Dr. Palmer: Absolutely! Thank you very much. This was a lot of fun and thanks for doing this and thanks to all educators all across the country.
Jay: Absolutely! It’s my pleasure. And that represents another episode of Educators Lead.
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Edu-leaders, thank you for joining us on Educators Lead. Visit us at educatorslead.com for everything we talked about today, free resources and much, much more!
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About EducatorsLead:
Educators Lead is a podcast created to help launch educators into the next level of leadership. This show is for you if you are interested in educational leadership as an assistant principal, principal, superintendent, teacher or someone who hopes to be a school leader one day. Educators Lead offers inspiration and practical advice to help you lead more effectively. Jay Willis interviews school leaders weekly to discuss why and when these educators made the decision to move into school leadership, challenges along the journey, and stories that made it all worthwhile. Educators Lead is a great resource for any educator looking to make a greater impact.
Educate. Inspire. Lead.
